Parker: Dario Lodigiani was one of a kind

From SABR member Ev Parker at the Napa Valley Register on February 1, 2014, with mention of SABR member Norman Macht:

Not long after we arrived in Napa in October of 1997, I received a phone call from an official of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). The caller, a gentlemen whom I knew, asked me to do him and SABR a favor.

Norman Macht was president of SABR’s oral history department, and he mentioned that SABR, in conjunction with the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., collected audio tapes on the reminiscences of old major leaguers before their time was up and their priceless memories were lost forever.

My assignment was, if possible, to track down and tape an interview with a Napan by the name of Dario Lodigiani, who once played for the Philadelphia Athletics and the Chicago White Sox. So the investigation began.

I first procured a research book titled “The Pacific Coast League: A Statistical History 1903-1957” and learned that Dario, whose name was in the Napa phone book, played second base for the Oakland Oaks until he was traded to the San Francisco Seals and played for the legendary Lefty O’Doul, a local idol, who once hit .398 for the Philadelphia Phillies. From the PCL, Dario was purchased by Connie Mack of the Athletics and later traded to the White Sox, where he was managed by a dear pal, Jimmy Dykes, who, like Dario, thought baseball was fun.

So with that information in hand, I called Dario, and as it turned out, a friendship began.